Done in the appropriate fashion, a candyflip unlocks all the profound sensations associated with LSD, coupled with the fervour for life, self-assuredness, and connectedness of MDMA. It can be a truly delightful encounter, but according to many faceless forum posters it is difficult to do correctly, and requires a lot of careful preparation and foresight, even more than acid does all by its lonesome.

Personally, I didn’t follow any walkthrough, so I made an absolute pig’s abortion out of the methodology. However, due to the calibre of company it has been my best psychedelics experience to date which just goes to show that your friendship dynamics make all the difference.

The story begins with an innocent gallivant to the pub accompanied by my drug-taking associate, Caroline. Don’t pretend that Neil Diamond hasn’t commandeered your internal monologue right now. I was visiting my hometown at the time and so the setting was a regional pub surrounded by wholesome slack-jawed yokels. We sat around fraternising for perhaps 40 minutes before our focus diverted from alcohol consumption to MDMA. Caroline had some disco biscuits leftover from a previous jamboree. We nibbled on them and waited around for the capsules to take effect. However, being of the millennial persuasion and inclined to favour instant gratification, we desired a more rapid escalation.

We informed our drinking companions that we were returning home to drop acid in a brazen fashion and left them to their own devices. Since the pair of us were staying with our respective parents at the time, this limited our scope of venues to engage in candyflipping. It was around three o’clock in the morning when we reached our destination, being my parent’s humble abode. It seemed like a perfectly logical course of action at the time because they were sound asleep at the opposite end of the house. In retrospect, it was very much ill-advised. After allowing the tabs to dissolve underneath our tongues for 20 minutes and an additional 40-minute waiting game, the combined drugs began to manifest.

As this wasn’t our first rodeo, I had grown more comfortable with the idea of dropping acid and I found the MDMA reaction offset the paranoia typically associated with psychedelics. We sat unflinchingly in front of YouTube for an unknown span of time watching a fedora wearing lad bopping around to electro swing, eyes locked with the screen and giggling uncontrollably. Somehow it became the most mesmerising occurrence in existence. Another difference I found was my level of confidence in operating technology, even when peaking. We peaked so hard, that everyone in Philadelphia felt it. Ahem. We documented our experience on various social media platforms, but there weren’t many individuals awake at the time to view our shenanigans.

Electro swing was followed by Baroness, Open and the ethereal stylings of Florence. At this point, Caroline started to feel uneasy about the atmosphere created by the change. She stated her suspicions that we had travelled back through time, but I was able to keep her grounded with logical crooning. We ventured into the backyard for an intermission durry, but I managed to break off the stick used to adjust the blinds and so it became an instrument of entertainment. We regarded it as a cosmic sceptre. The pallid-faced concrete beneath our feet somehow felt squelchy in texture, despite being rock solid. My favourite moment was perhaps looking up at the night sky and drinking in the constellations with our corneas. Due to the kaleidoscope effect, everything was swirling and it was the most pulchritudinous sight to behold.

After prancing around outside like a couple of commonplace dryads, we returned to the warmth of the loungeroom where the resident canine sat. I was surprised we didn’t end up rolling around in the mud proclaiming to be lizard royalty. The dog regarded us quizzically as we sought the texture of its fur like a couple of autistic children, but ultimately, we retired to my bedroom to create as much distance between our drug addled antics and the unconscious elderberries as possible. We had been locked into the candyflipping state for several hours and it was starting to grow tiresome. We began listening to Devin Townsend followed by Between the Buried and Me and laid down for a time. This is when the sensation of astral projection started to kick in, along with crazy visuals on the ceiling.

For the bitter end of our trip, we embarked on an Angus and Julia Stone playlist which made everything feel quite surreal and sombre, but in a pleasant way. Despite lying there with our eyes closed, neither of us had actually slept. It was impossible with the electrodes buzzing in our craniums. At 7:30am, I slithered into the bathroom to examine my hugely dilated pupils. The other two occupants of the house had started to rustle into existence and I became cornered in the bathroom. Both my baby boomer parents come from a somewhat conservative and religious upbringing and to my knowledge, neither have experimented with substances aside from the atypical vices of alcohol and cigarettes.

My father wished me a good morning and reminded me to pay the car insurance. Here I was still wearing the same clothes from the night before and resembling a dishevelled homeless man. I tried not to look at him directly in the peepers as I was still facing the mirror and thanked him for the aide-mémoire. He exited stage left without further questions and I breathed a sigh of relief. My mother then emerged from the shadowy pits. She told me they were going to church, my eyes remained downcast and I nodded. After these encounters, I retreated to the depths of my drug den. Caroline eventually left and there I remained, still unable to slip into the arms of Morpheus despite how ludicrously tired I was. I remained bedridden for the rest of the day with a trifecta hangover. I couldn’t really identify a come down period as such, it was mainly allowing my body to recover. In the end, my parents never did question what happened that night and remained entirely oblivious.